


fate makes fools of us all (she plays the longest game)

by teamfreehoodies



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Concepts of Worth, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Exploration of Beauty, F/F, Female Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Hurt/Comfort, Mage Jaskier | Dandelion, Pre-Transformation Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, magical transformation, they’re lesbians your honour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28186650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreehoodies/pseuds/teamfreehoodies
Summary: It’s not that she’d meant to become a witch, but... well.Sometimes these things just happen.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 28
Kudos: 76
Collections: The Witcher Quick Fic #02, w_l_w





	fate makes fools of us all (she plays the longest game)

**Author's Note:**

> CW:  
> pink farm animals are mentioned a few times  
> discussion/themes of worth as tied to beauty (canon-typical)  
> 

It’s not that she’d meant to become a witch, but... _well._

Sometimes these things just happen. 

She’d been a bard once upon a time, done her time around the circuit and been on the verge of making a name for herself, peddling sad love songs, and heroic ballads, and knightly lais. 

She’d been the newest darling, pretty and young and talented: all the lords lusted after her and the ladies couldn't decide if they _wanted_ her or if they wanted to _be_ her. It was intoxicating. Thrilling. The kind of life she’d once only dreamed of, sitting in the window of her father’s estate, staring outwards at the vast world just waiting for her and dying to become a part of it. 

It was everything she’d ever wanted. For one gloriously brief summer she was on top of the world. 

So, of course, it all went to shit. 

* * *

“You’ve got the woodruff?” 

“What kind of question is that?” Jaskier asks, pawing through her saddlebags in search of the requested herb. 

“One in need of answer, you twat. As it turns out, I’m not a bloody mind-reader.” Yennefer replies, amicably enough, as she leans over the little cauldron they’re using to brew their potion. 

They pause for a moment, before Yennefer, realising that, actually, technically, she is, indeed, a mind-reader, holds up one hand to stave off Jaskier's reply.

“ _Don’t!_ ” she cries, ignoring Jaskier entirely save for the hand held up to silence her. “ _Don’t_ say it, just give me the damned herbs.” 

Jaskier slaps the bundle of leaves and delicate white flowers into Yennefer’s waiting palm, biting her lips to keep the smile off her face. She watches carefully as Yennefer crushes the plants, crumbling them into the concoction already bubbling away over their little fire. As each flowerhead touches the surface of the brew it puffs away in a flash of smoke, leaving behind a slightly browner liquid in its wake. 

“Disgusting.” Jaskier offers, wrinkling her nose at the noxious fumes as they rise out of the mixture. Yennefer tuts at her, but otherwise ignores her comment, stirring carefully. “You’re really not bothered by the smell of that? Not at all?” she asks, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket to cover her nose with. It’s scented with rose petals and lilac, plucked from the flowers that Yennefer pulls to life every time they pause some place long enough for the chaos bleeding out of her to settle into the earth. What a pair they make, Yennefer overflowing with chaos and Jaskier— well. Being Jaskier.

“There are worse smells.” Yennefer replies simply, then stops talking, refocusing on the miracle she's brewing for them. Jaskier could take a peek at her thoughts, but that feels an awful lot like cheating, and anyways Jaskier’s magic is... _unstructured_ and prone to doing things she hasn’t intended. Better to not try lest she accidentally cause some harm after all. 

“You think it will work?” she asks again, working the edge of the cloth between her ring and pinky finger, just for something to do with her hand. She shifts up her other shoulder, slightly annoyed by the dangling edge of her empty sleeve. It had been unwinding all afternoon, but she’d not been able to fix it while they rode, and Yennefer had wanted to get the potion going in time for the full-moon. She’s been kept too busy until now, and with one hand protecting her from the fetid, cloying decay-scent of their toxic miracle, there's no way she can possibly fix it.

“I know it will.” Yennefer wipes the back of her hand across her crooked jaw, clearing the sweat from where it’s dripping down her neck.

Yennefer’s confidence is enticing; Jaskier wants to believe it’s true, that it really will work this time, and they’ll be fixed. Be cured. That she can go back to singing and playing and being a well-known bard, someone of station, someone of worth. 

But hope is a dangerous game, and she’s been burned before.

Not every gift is equal, nor every miracle blessed.

* * *

Their first meeting was by chance. Jaskier had been drunk.

(She’d spent an awful lot of time those first two years after _the incident_ drunk. Either in her cups or on her way or hopped up on fisstech, strung out in the back corner of a disreputable tavern, waiting for the crash or for the rush or for the high or for the drop. Passivity had been the name of the game, in those early days. Before Yennefer had shown her what she was capable of.) 

There’d been... _an altercation_ , two men cornering a half-dead Jaskier against a dilapidated barn, before Yennefer had come storming in, an angry pig charging ahead of her. The men who’d been threatening Jaskier dropped her and ran, pursued by the pig.

Jaskier, strings cut, only half-aware of her surroundings at all, had looked up at this mad pig-angel, half-feral and spitting invectives at the retreating would-be attackers, and fallen in love right there. 

Yennefer had saved her. Found her half-gone against her parent’s barn, and took her in. It had been easy enough to hide in the pig-sty with Yennefer those first few months, easier still when the chaos, finally free to grow in Jaskier’s newly unpoisoned body had lashed out, taken them away.

* * *

They'd started a new life for themselves: they were monstrous and grotesque cast-offs, the forgotten dregs of a society that saw no use for them, ugly as they were; ruined, and wronged, and bitter. They could take care of each other. Could love each other. And if sometimes the impossible happened around them? If a bevy of flowers rose up overnight after they made love in a field left fallow? If, once, their house turned invisible entirely just as a mob with torches passed by, chanting prayers for the Eternal Flame?

Well. At least they were safe, right?

* * *

Safety is a myth made up for pretty people; the ugly amongst us know the truth. Jaskier is spitting mad, is furious, is bitter and poisoned and letting go but chaos is chaos is chaos: it's immutable. It's ineffable. It's explosive. 

It's terrifying.

* * *

Yennefer’s moment had happened later, when the Rectoress came for Jaskier.

She’d transported them too; unfortunately the field of buttercups they’d landed in hadn’t stopped the Rectoress from following them. The rock that Yennefer smashed over her head? Now that had been enough to stop her. 

They’d been too young, too new to this kind of life to know what to do except run. 

It weighs on Jaskier, sometimes, late at night especially. Running away had been the right call, of that she’s sure: Jaskier’s chaos isn’t strong enough to be of any use to the sorceresses at Aretuza. She isn’t controlled enough to be anything but a nuisance. And being made to go back to court? Jaskier escaped that life once already, she isn’t exactly keen to dive back into it.

But they’d left that woman’s body in a field of buttercups, no one to bury her or send her on, just a body in a field of flowers, left to rot. That doesn’t sit right. Of all the memories that could have haunted Jaskier, that moment— watching the woman fall, spineless, loose-limbed and bloody to the ground: that’s what keeps Jaskier up at night. 

* * *

“Yennefer,” Jaskier starts, voice lilting upwards (it’s been four years since she last sang anything, but the body remembers even when the heart can’t), “Is it meant to be so...” she pulls the stirrer up, letting the now nearly gelatinous mixture drop back with a sickly plop into the cauldron, “ _viscous?_ ” she settles on, letting the displeasure curl her tongue. 

Yennefer pops her head up from the bedroll, hair a riotous mess of curls around her head, and blinks wildly at Jaskier for one long moment before she springs up and nearly knocks Jaskier to the ground in her haste to get at the potion. 

“Yes, yes, _yes,_ ” she’s chanting under her breath, spinning her hands in slow concentric circles over the pot, before she cuts off her murmuring, switching to clearly spoken Elder. She's speaking too fast for Jaskier’s ear to catch. Her Elder is archaic and best suited for study, not conversation or spell-casting. A remnant of a life once spent in pursuit of knowledge, training for a future stolen from her. 

Jaskier, used to Yennefer charging ahead in their magical endeavours without bothering to fill her in, slumps back over their horse, tangling her fingers in Pegasus’ mane. She’d taken the third watch over the bubbling potion, and her legs burn from standing, her eyes from the heat, and her arm from the constant motion. Yennefer carries on with her magic; the ozone stink of it sends a shivering awareness tingling up Jaskier’s spine— like the moment before a lightning strike, but drawn out and pervasive. 

It aches in its own way, touching the edges of Jaskier’s magic, curled up tightly in her chest where she keeps it hidden, keeps it constrained. 

Keeps it in check.

* * *

The thing is, it shouldn’t have happened. (This is what everyone says of tragedy, but even fate herself hadn’t planned for this.)

Jaskier was walking a mountain pass, coming up from a stay in Novigrad, headed towards Lyria, maybe. The road was her muse, and she went where it pleased, living off of rations and what she could trap on her own. It was a meagre life, but a free one, and sometimes she could find a caravan to travel with for days at a time, tumbling about like a leaf on the wind.

It was everything she’d ever wanted from life. She was happy.

She was also lost in the mountains, and trying not to panic about that. She wasn’t doing very well. The trail was dark, the pass thin: it’d been poised on the edge of a landslide for half a season, fate sitting curled at the top to set it rolling. 

(Fate doesn’t make mistakes, but not all actions have predictable outcomes, not even for one who should know the consequences. 

Chaos is immutable.) 

A falcon drops its prey; the field mouse screams the whole way down, skin from the falcon’s leg still in its teeth. It cracks sickly off the ground where it lands, snapping its spine and sending enough potential energy slamming into the boulder fate is watching that it tips, just slightly leftwards.

Jaskier was meant to die, and be reborn Julian Alfred Pankratz, third of his line: instead of crushing her chest, the boulder pins her shoulder to the cliffside— a life is spared, another lost; Fate gnashes her teeth and fucks off to another life more fit for meddling. 

This one is no use to her anymore.

* * *

Jaskier lasted three days, arm crushed to the mountain wall, crying and raving and delirious with pain before a passing witcher saved her. He offered to kill her, if she wanted: a clean death, he promised, for he couldn’t promise her a healer to save the arm, or even that she’d survive the loss. 

It’s a kindness wrapped in misery (the only kind this witcher knows,) but Jaskier was young still, three days into delirium and fever and she wanted to live. 

The witcher saved her life, but not her arm, so really, what did he save?

* * *

Yennefer has a twisted spine and jaw: bones curled over themself, too much for the space they are given. Yennefer is too much for the space she is given. Deserves more than what the universe has offered her. 

She knows this. The universe knows that she knows this. They have been arguing about it all her life.

Yennefer isn’t trained: her chaos is too much for her body, too much too much _too much_ — all her life Yennefer has been denied. Not here. Not now.

Her chaos settles over the potion like a benediction, a last prayer to no-one but herself before they take back what should have been theirs. 

Jaskier is owed a life stolen from her; Yennefer, a life denied her. 

This is going to work. 

It _has to_.

* * *

It tastes like pig-shit. It burns going down. 

(Yennefer doesn’t know this yet, but the fire in her blood has always been there: this magic only awakens it.) 

(Jaskier hasn’t sung in nearly four years, not since a field mouse stole her future, but she sings now, screams echoing through the forest and mirroring her companion’s.)

Birds take flight, scattering as the wildlife vacates the area ahead of a wash of chaos; lightning and ozone and fate, intertwined.

* * *

Yennefer is no stranger to pain. (Jaskier either.) 

This though, this is new. Her bones crack, cutting through flesh and muscle as they creak back into place: each hard won centimeter scrapes against her nerves, an overwhelming amount of input that whites out her vision: steals her breath, for a heart-stopping moment as her central nervous system realigns itself entirely she is 

nothing.

  
Is stripped flesh raw, is bone and ligament and _absent_ is _gone_ is:

  
She slams back into her body in time to feel the sick hollow _pop!_ as her jaw slots into its new shape— screams out with the breath returned to her for this purpose.

Agony makes new shapes of us all, but this one was drawn by Yennefer, conceived and shaped and _birthed_ by her: she belongs to _no one_ , is made only unto herself.

She is burned out and wiped clean, flesh made innocent by the fire.

She is everything she was always meant to be.

* * *

Jaskier is no stranger to pain. (Yennefer either.)

She spent three days with her arm crushed and rotting between a rock and a harder rock, made peace with death as it came for her and then cried herself into new life with the ache of _wanting_ so badly you would die for it; would _live_ for it.

This though, this is worse. This is a million ants piece by piece rebuilding what they took from her, the maggots used to save her flesh from rotting off the stump of her shoulder brought back to regurgitate what they stole: it’s agony and misery and torturous hurt, rhapsodizing miracles into place.

The miraculous and the grotesque are mirror images when you hold them up to each other. Jaskier is being held up to herself, is being remade of herself: flesh crawls down to cover bone and sinew and blood as it reshapes itself in her image. An arm given back is a life restored, is a price Jaskier pays in blood already spilled.

Fate makes fools of us all (she plays the longest game.)

* * *

It would be a kindness had they been granted unconsciousness. 

The world is not kind, so when the pain finally abates, they crawl towards each other on shaking hands and knees. Jaskier pauses to gag dryly, coughing miserably, open mouthed and wet. 

“ _What,_ ” Yennefer pants, collapsing on the ground within reach of Jaskier, rolling over onto her back (newly straightened, though she hasn't had time to notice that yet,) “change not suit?”

“Fuck you,” Jaskier says plainly, smashing her face into Yennefer’s stomach as she falls over to land on her, a significantly softer resting place than the forest floor around them. “Did it work?” 

“You tell me.” 

Jaskier groans, a long, low sound that shoots straight down Yennefer’s newly straightened spine. Yennefer pushes her shoulders into the ground, both of them even, both of them perfectly balanced. Jaskier shifts on Yennefer’s stomach again, punching her breath out of her chest, but she welcomes the distraction, terrified of the giddy lightness filling up her lungs.

“Yennefer,” Jaskier starts, a matching giddiness catching in her throat, infusing her words with a slight tremor. “Yennefer, I— my arm is back.” The arm in question is waved in front of Yennefer’s face, then Jaskier pushes against Yennefer’s stomach, driving the breath out of her, and suddenly Jaskier’s face replaces the arm that had just been there. 

“Yenn, did you hear me? It worked.” 

“So you can play again?” she asks, afraid of this answer. They’ve been so focused on the goal of being more than what they were, and it’s too soon to be afraid for the things they’ll no longer be; the things they’re about to lose, now that Jaskier has no more reason to follow her, no more reason to _need_ her. 

“I should be, though I’m terribly out of practice, and I’ve no lute anymore.” Jaskier smiles at her, then lightning quick, dips down and plants a lingering kiss on her lips, too soft and too heavy all at once. “Thank you,” she whispers, then slides her weight sideways, flopping dramatically into the dirt so she’s lying parallel to Yennefer, both of them staring at the stars above them. 

_They’re beautiful._

* * *

Jaskier doesn’t leave the next morning. Or the morning after that, though Yennefer is braced for it.

Instead they travel on together, Yennefer performing consultations and selling cures and magic spells to the citizenry, earning just enough coin to keep them going. Jaskier sings, unaccompanied, squirreling away her payment in the hopes of earning enough to purchase a lute; she needs an instrument to be a bard again, to earn enough to support herself. 

That must be what she’s doing, still following Yennefer around from place to place. Only sticking around long enough to halve the costs of living until she can strike out on her own, now that she’s gotten what she wants from their arrangement. 

It’s pragmatic. It makes sense.

It’s what Yennefer would do, in the same situation. 

* * *

Yennefer only lasts a week before the waiting game is too much for her. Jaskier’s just sung and earned enough coin that she’s genuinely finding it difficult to fit it all in her purse, and watching her struggle to put the coins away is grating on Yennefer’s nerves. Combined with the shitty ale, it's enough to snap her patience.

A man sidles up to her at the bar, another nuisance that has been making her feel shittier and shittier all week, and she ficks her fingers at him, casting a silent spell that shrinks his dick, sending him squeaking back over to his corner. It’s only temporary, more’s the pity, but it’s enough to get her point across. She’d wanted to be desirable, but actually being desired is irksome; an irritation so fine she mistook it for satisfaction the first several encounters in this vein. 

Jaskier looks up at the muttered spellwork, distracting herself from her coin long enough to smile warmly at Yennefer before she goes right back to trying to tease more space out of the leather purse. 

“Do you need help,” Yennefer offers flatly, chin propped on her hand now as she leans over the table to give Jaskier some cover from the watchful eyes of the other patrons. Given her history it’s somewhat surprising she isn’t more cautious about these things, but then, also, she is _Jaskier_ , so careless might very well be her primary attribute. 

“Oh, could you?” Jaskier laughs, seemingly surprised by the offer. Is Yennefer so miserly in her estimation? An offer of help so shocking? Her heart clenches painfully in her chest, and she reaches out to take the purse in one hand, ignoring the uncomfortable pressure of that particular flash of disappointment. She has no right to be upset by this, she reminds herself. This is for the best, probably. 

She hands the now ensorcelled purse back to Jaskier, who gleefully sweeps her coin into it before cinching it shut and re-tying it to her belt. 

“Guess what?” she asks, reaching out to take a large swig of her own mostly untouched ale. She still moves sometimes like she’s forgotten she has two arms: a thousand adaptations suddenly vestigial remembrances, shadow actions still waiting to be played. Her restored arm currently is held stiffly at her side, forgotten as she moves through old motions, familiar nights spent just like this— when she remembers her arm is newly returned to her, will she remember that she no longer needs Yennefer? 

“What?” Yennefer replies when it becomes clear Jaskier is waiting on an answer still. 

“I’ve finally got enough for a lute. There’s a luthier in Toussaint who owes me a favor, figure I can get him to help me out.”

“And then?” 

Jaskier smiles at her, a question unspoken in her eyes, “I’ll finally have a lute to sing with, if all goes well and he doesn’t swindle me.”

“And after that?” Yennefer presses, determined to just have this out with. She’s tired of waiting, of wondering if today will be the day Jaskier finally says goodbye. If it’s truly over then let it be done with. A clean break is better than a wound left to fester.

“Why the sudden interest in our future, darling dearest?” Jaskier covers Yennefer’s wrist with her hand, warm and calloused and so much larger than her own. “I don’t know any better than you do what’s coming. The whole world is at our feet, Yenn! We can do anything we want!” 

Shame and cautious hope both are tangled in Yennefer’s throat, flushing her face, but she won’t back down. She meets Jaskier’s gaze head on. Proud. Defiant. If she is to be denied it will be on her terms. “You’ll stay? With me?” 

“Oh _Yenn_ , there was never any question.” Jaskier grasps the back of Yennefer’s neck, so gently, pulling her forward so their foreheads are touching, separated from the rest of the world by the curtain their hair makes where it tangles together between them. “I fell in love with you when we were living in pig-shit, and I still love you now that we've drunk it. You can’t _hope_ to get rid of me.” 

Yennefer laughs, blinking moisture out of her eyes, and she reaches forward, tangling her fingers in the skirts covering Jaskier’s lap. “We did it,” she offers weakly, because now that she isn’t worried about Jaskier abandoning her the truth of their accomplishments is finally dawning on her. 

They’ve done it. They’ve become powerful on their own terms, their own magic. They’ve made themselves into divinity. 

No one can take that from them, or hold it over them. They’re free, and beautiful, and fucking radiant. 

_They’re glorious._

**Author's Note:**

> Written for QuickFic  
> Merry Christmas!


End file.
